The primary goal of this study has been to determine whether the degree to which an individual invests himself into the life of a small, voluntary, communal group bears any systematic relationship to his subsequent degree of alienation from the larger society. If a relationship between communal self-investment and subsequent societal alienation is found, a further goal would be to find out what particular aspects of commune social structure or events in communal life correlate most highly with changes in the degree of alienation.